Final Turds & Blossoms tally

CityBeat reveals which campaigns smelled the freshest and funkiest

The end is nigh! No doubt, there will be cheers in some political circles that this puerile political column is coming into a conclusion. Our turds were cited in political mailers and hat-tipped on talk radio and earned us empty threats from a vexatious litigant (where was Lorie Zapf when we needed her?). To be honest, we’re glad this election’s almost over. Here are the final three blossomiest and turdiest campaigns, based on the totals and a few last minute awards.

The Blossomiest

1. Democrat Ray Lutz and Libertarian Michael Benoit, candidates for Congress (5,000 blossoms combined). Hands down, the best political stunt of the season was the coordinated hunger strike launched by Congressman Duncan D. Hunter’s two opponents. The plan was to shame Hunter into a series of debates. In the end, Lutz and Benoit lasted a little more than a week, lost a lot of weight and Lutz had to have an enema. Hunter only agreed to one debate, but the two candidates succeeded splendidly when it came to embarrassing Hunter in the national news media. Consequently, we round their 365 blossoms up to 5,000.

2. Republican Party of San Diego County (2010 blossoms). This is the second time the local GOP have made our blossom lists. They’ve rocked the social media, capitalized on the Tea Party movement, built the anti-incumbent momentum and registered a ton of voters—it’s a Republican year and so we’ll top off their blossoms to match the date.

3. Ron Roberts, incumbent, San Diego County Board of Supervisors (420 blossoms). It’s often joked that Roberts is the only Democrat on the Board of Supes. He’s actually a Republican who has taken a lot of moderate positions to stay in power—including voting against the county’s defacto ban on medical marijuana dispensaries. In the minds of Prop 19 voters, the move put him on even footing with his opponent, Stephen Whitburn, who served as co-chair of the city’s Medical Marijuana Task Force. The Turdiest

1. TIE Lorie Zapf, Republican candidate City Council, and Ralph Denney, Republican candidate for Assembly (Infinite turds). Both of these candidates began accruing turds every day they failed to remove false claims from their websites. Denney continues to promote a poll that claims he would beat his opponent Atkins 47 to 53, even though the poll was proven to have been rigged. Zapf similarly ignored the Latino American Political Association’s request that she remove their endorsement from her site. She lagged for more than a week before removing it, but the endorsement still appears on her profile at Smart Voter.org. Since the turds are still flowing, we can only record them as infinite.

2. Derrick Roach, Republican candidate for Assembly (2554 turds). Roach is an Andrew Breitbart-worshipping Republican operative who can’t quite decide if he’s an activist, a journalist, a politician, a private dick or just a total one. He earned a lot of turds this cycle, first for striking out at fellow Republicans with letters to the chairman calling for their expulsion from the central committee. Later we gave him poops for continuing to propagate misinformation that ACORN officials were caught on video “promoting numerous illegal activities.” At the same time, Roach has endeared himself to us this election with tips and dropping campaign bombshells (sometimes duds, sometimes not) and we hope he wears this as a badge of honor.

3. Duncan D. Hunter, incumbent Congressman(497 turds): Of course voters should be wary of Hunter; In 2008, he was elected on really little more than his name and the fact he was active duty military. This cycle, we turded Hunter when Council Member and fellow Republican Carl De Maio all but called him a homophobic bigot at a political event and when Hunter either straight-up lied at a debate or had an alarming weak grasp on the facts when it came to the United States exploiting Iraq’s oil supply.